


Late Night Check-In

by Pigzxo



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 00:32:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5354153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigzxo/pseuds/Pigzxo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gansey panics when Ronan's not in his bedroom in the middle of the night and when he calls him to see if he's all right, Adam picks up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late Night Check-In

            Gansey woke in the middle of the night for unknown reasons. Well, not unknown, but unnameable. His phone had fallen off of the bed, out of the grasp of his cramped fingers, but he knew that he would have no missed calls, no missed chance to hear Blue’s voice. Tonight just wasn’t one of the nights that she liked him and he liked to pretend that that was okay.

            He pulled himself out of bed and walked over to the mini Henrietta he was slowly rebuilding. He only got halfway through cutting a cereal box when his hands started to shake and he knew that tonight wasn’t a night to rebuild the town. His eyes were practically glued shut already, fatigue heavy on his shoulders but sleep escaping him. So he did the only other thing he could do when faced with insomnia, shaking hands, and tired eyes. He knocked on the door of the other insomniac in the house.

            The door rattled, too loud in the dead of night, but no sound came from the other side. Gansey knocked harder then pressed his ear to the wood, listening for the echoes of Ronan’s terrible music, played too loud through his headphones. Nothing. Gansey tried the knob and the door swung open, Ronan’s bed unmade, empty.

            Panic took him over. The rational part of his brain reminded him _Ronan never tried to kill himself_ but the part of his brain that had worried over Ronan for nearly a year, jumped to the worst conclusion every time he had found him drunk or gone, was still in full swing. It hadn’t had a chance since then to properly worry over Ronan, where Ronan was, so that Gansey could gently slide it into the part of the brain he never used, never had to use.

            So even though he knew, _he knew,_ that Ronan was perfectly safe, asleep somewhere else, out late driving his car too fast, he scrambled for his phone. His hand wrapped around it, his body collapsed to sit cross-legged on the floor, and he hit the call button for Ronan’s cell.

            _You better pick up._

The phone rang,

            Rang,

            Rang...

 

            Adam grumbled in his sleep, his eyes glued shut and his body a hundred times heavier than he had thought it was when he fell asleep. His hand scrambled for the noise, not altogether unfamiliar in the middle of the night, and he let the bright light of the phone screen blind him.

            Gansey.

            He answered. “Hello?”

            “Ronan?” Gansey asked, his voice up an octave from where it usually was, his panic obvious over the phone line.

            “Gansey,” Adam said, knowing it didn’t clarify anything. “What’s the matter?”

            “Ronan’s gone,” Gansey said, like he forgot who he had called. It was very likely that he had. It wasn’t like he was in the habit of calling Ronan just so that he could be ignored. Adam silently prayed that was the case. “I’m going to go check the church. No. Wait. You should check the church, you’re closer. I’ll go to the school and the bridge and—”

            “He’s fine,” Adam grumbled. He hated to say it, to admit that he knew _exactly_ where Ronan was right then. He could feel every inch of the other boy, their skin plastered together with long dried sweat. The curls of Ronan’s muscles were tight across his back, the insides of his thighs warm and salty.

            “What?”

            “He’s fine,” Adam repeated. He took a deep breath, prayed for Gansey to be clueless for once in his life. “He’s here.”

            “He’s...” Adam heard the stutter in Gansey’s voice, the trip he did over the words, like he had been so sure Ronan was dead that to forgo the search for him felt like blasphemy. Adam probably would have agreed if he hadn’t been asleep for only two hours and didn’t have to get up in three. “He’s there.”

            “Yes.”

            “Safe?”

            Adam sighed. Part of him really wanted to hang up and he knew that was the part of him Ronan had cultivated, carefully, turning him into someone that could even think of hanging up on a distressed Gansey in the middle of the night. So he switched it off, turned on his born and bred Henrietta charm and said, accent thick, “You wanna talk to ‘im?”

            Gansey immediately agreed so Adam shoved his elbow back into Ronan’s rib cage lightly, then harder, until he heard a grunt. Adam held the phone over his shoulder, waved it in the air so that the light flashed around the room, waking up his eyes if not his mind. Strong fingers curled over his, the grip not unkind, and he felt Ronan roll away from him. His back was instantly cold, unprotected. He rolled onto his back so that he could stare at Ronan in the semi-light of the phone. Ronan fumbled, his eyes half-closed, his gaze angry, like he blamed the phone for all his problems.

            Adam took the phone back from him gently and pressed speakerphone. He laid the phone against Ronan’s bare chest, could almost feel the cold it created on his skin. He rested his hand against Ronan’s abs and his heart skipped a beat when Ronan wrapped his own hand around his fingers.

            “Gansey?” Ronan mumbled, his voice rough with sleep. The word was a growl, a hungry cat woken from sleep. Adam thought that for sure that would only make Gansey more afraid.

            But relief flooded Gansey’s voice. “Ronan,” he said, like the word was a prayer. The thought kind of threw Adam off for a second, since Ronan’s name was his prayer, on his lips, only hours before. He curled closer to Ronan, his head dipping to Ronan’s shoulder, and kissed his skin. “You’re all right?”

            “Fucking fantastic,” Ronan said.

            “Next time you crash at Adam’s, call me?” Gansey said.

            “Sorry,” Ronan said, sounding distinctly not sorry.

            There was silence on the line and Adam knew immediately that Gansey didn’t believe everything was all right. Or, if he believed that everything was all right, he thought something was off. He just didn’t know _what._ Adam considered hanging up the phone before Gansey could figure it out, but one of his hands was still wrapped in Ronan’s fingers and moving the other would force him to make an awkward shift, throwing off the odd equilibrium of the two of them.

            “Why are you at Adam’s?” Gansey asked.

            Adam closed his eyes, tried to think of the response Ronan would give. Ronan wouldn’t lie, but there were a couple of ways around the truth. It was late. I fell asleep by mistake. Homework (which, in theory was a lie, but a lie that they had told themselves in the first place, so Adam felt that it should still count as the truth).

            “We had sex,” Ronan said.

            Adam was suddenly on high alert, every nerve in his body firing. His blue eyes widened and he looked at Ronan in the darkness, the phone’s light sending shadows of night terrors along his jaw. On the other end of the line, Gansey’s silence was palpable, buzzing, like a live thing in the night.

            “What the fuck?” Adam hissed.

            Ronan smirked. Smirked because he knew that Adam would never say ‘fuck’ had he not been such a bad influence. Smirked because Adam’s accent was still thick on his tongue. Ronan’s eyes finally open the whole way, flicked over Adam’s face, down the length of his exposed chest. They were close enough to kiss, but neither of them reached to fill the space.

            After a few more seconds of silence, Gansey said, “Well... uh... okay. See you tomorrow?”

            “Noon?” Ronan confirmed.

            “Noon,” Gansey echoed. Then the line went abruptly dead, Gansey forgetting his impeccable manners in the moment. His phone voice, the Richard Campbell Gansey III voice, had dropped, the phone forgotten.

            Adam took the phone from Ronan’s chest, threw it back on the side table. He turned as he did it and Ronan sidled up behind him, his lips rough and unkind on the back of Adam’s neck. His teeth scratched the skin.

            “Why did you do that?” Adam asked.

            “I never lie,” Ronan replied.

            Adam almost said, “Fuck you,” but Ronan might have taken it literally and Adam really did need to sleep.

 

Gansey stared at the open door to Ronan’s bedroom, his body frozen. His phone was still at his ear, his thumb on the place where the end call button used to be. From the doorway of his room, Noah asked, “Everything all right?”

            Gansey managed to turn his head to him. He noticed, almost reflexively, that his mouth was still slightly parted around the goodbye he hadn’t uttered. He closed his mouth, lips smacking together, and said, “Fine.”

            Noah stared at him. “Are you okay?”

            “Of course.”

            “I mean with Adam and Ronan,” Noah clarified. “Are you... offended?”

            “Offended?” Gansey echoed. The word bounced around in his skull, its meaning escaping him for a moment. He blinked, pulled himself back together. He put on his Richard Campbell Gansey III attitude and said, “Of course not. If they’re happy, I’m happy for them.”

            Noah nodded, disappeared.

            Gansey scoffed. “Offended by them having sex,” he said. He shook his head like it was a joke, then reconsidered. He mumbled, “I’m a little offended they’re doing it without me...” He looked down at the phone in his hand. He called Blue.


End file.
